Kash Patel Wants the Insurrection Protection Committee to Investigate Why Robert Hur Tried to Protect Past Ongoing Investigations

/28 Comments/in , , , , /by

Matt Taibbi (aka MattyDickPics) and Kash Patel are whining about the Nunes Memo again.

As you’ll recall, in the first year of the Trump Administration, Patel wrote a misleading memo for Devin Nunes purporting that the entire Russian investigation stemmed from the Steele dossier.  When the Carter Page IG Report and FISA applications were released, it became clear how Patel spun the facts. In this post I cataloged what both Nunes and Adam Schiff, in his counterpart to the Nunes memo, got wrong.

But it’s not the Nunes Memo itself that Taibbi and Patel are whining about. They’re complaining about the circumstances of its release five years ago.

Taibbi made it the subject of his latest Twitter Files propaganda thread and related Substack — the latter of which, astoundingly, says the public has to rely on the attributions of cloud companies, something Taibbi has always refused to do when discussing the GRU attribution of the 2016 hacks targeting Democratic targets. “It’s over, you nitwits. It’s time to stow the Mueller votive candles, cop to the coverage pileup created by years of errors, and start the reconciliation process,” Taibbi says, in appealing to precisely the kind of evidence he himself has refused to credit for more than six years. I dealt with both in this thread, but the important takeaway is that Taibbi doesn’t even manage to get facts that both the Daily Beast and I were able to cover in real time, including the fact that Republicans, too, were making unsupported claims based on the Dashboard’s reporting and Russian trolls were part of — just not the biggest part — of the campaign.

[A] knowledgeable source says that Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.

In short, according to this source, who would not speak to The Daily Beast for attribution, the retweets are coming from inside the country.

The source pointed to influential American users on the right, including Donald Trump Jr., with his 2.49 million followers, pushing the hashtag forward. It’s become a favorite of far-right Republican congressmen, including Steve King, who claimed the still-secret memo shows the FBI was behaving “worse than Watergate” in one viral tweet. Mark Meadows called it an “absolutely shocking” display of “FISA abuses,” referring to a counterintelligence process.

Rules of Engagement

There are reasons for skepticism about both the source’s claim and Alliance for Securing Democracy’s contrary findings.

Russian influence accounts did, in fact, send an outsize number of tweets about #ReleaseTheMemo—simply not enough for those accounts to reach the top of Twitter’s internal analysis.

Meanwhile, Kash Patel is outraged that Merrick Garland picked Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified documents because, when and after serving as a top aide to Rod Rosenstein in the early days of the Russian investigation, he opposed release of the memo.

This guy Hur needs to be the first one subpoenaed by the new Special Select Committee under Jim Jordan’s authority on the weaponization of government and do you want to know why? Because Hur — we have the receipts, Steve, and we’re going to release them later — was sending communications to the Justice Department and Rod Rosenstein’s crew arguing against the release of the Nunes memo. Saying that it would bastardize and destroy the United States national security apparatus. This guy is a swamp monster of the Tier One level, he’s a government gangster, he’s now in charge of the continued crime scene cover-up, which is why the first congressional subpoena that has to go out for the weaponization of government subcommittee is against Hur.

Remember, this committee was modified during the period when key insurrectionists were refusing to vote for Kevin McCarthy to include language authorizing the committee to investigate why the Executive Branch is permitted to conduct criminal investigations of US citizens.

the expansive role of article II authority vested in the executive branch to collect information on or otherwise investigate citizens of the United States, including ongoing criminal investigations;

It may be the intent to interfere in ongoing investigations into people like Scott Perry and Paul Gosar (who changed their votes on McCarthy later in the week, as these changes were being made) and Jordan (who will have great leeway to direct the direction of this committee). But Jordan may be surprised when he discovers that Merrick Garland will enforce the long-standing DOJ policies about providing Congress access to ongoing investigations that Jeff Sessions and Matt Whitaker and Bill Barr did not. Indeed, some precedents from the Russia investigation legally prohibit the sharing of this information with Congress.

But Kash’s complaint (back atcha with the rap gangsta alliteration, Kash!) is a bellybutton moment in which he attempts to villainize Hur’s past commitment to those long-standing DOJ (and intelligence community, including the NSA that conduct much FISA surveillance) policies. Consider the things the memo revealed, many of which had never before been released publicly.

  • Details about the dates and approvals for four FISA orders
  • Financial details involving private individuals, including US citizens
  • Contents of the FISA memo (but not their true context)
  • A reference to a Mike Isikoff article that appeared in the Carter Page applications; Kash was outraged when his own public article was included in the warrant affidavit targeting Trump
  • Details from a Confidential Human Source file
  • Misrepresentations about both Bruce Ohr and his spouse, the latter of whom was a private citizen whose work was shared with the FBI as part of the effort to vet the dossier
  • Direct communications with the President-elect the likes of which Trump claimed were covered by Executive Privilege in the Mueller investigation
  • False claims about the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that are currently the subject of two Privacy Act lawsuits; even aside from the privacy implications, at the time it was virtually unprecedented for texts between FBI officials to be released, even in criminal discovery (and many of these released, including some misrepresented in the memo, pertained to work matters unrelated to the Russian investigation)

In other words, Kash Patel wants to investigate Hur’s comments, made either at the time he was the key overseer of the Mueller investigation or during a transition period as he awaited confirmation to be US Attorney, advocating that DOJ protect informants, FISA materials, details about private citizens, and work texts between FBI officials.

The very first thing Kash wants the Insurrection Protection Committee to investigate is why, five years ago, a senior DOJ official advocated following long-standing DOJ policy.

Share this entry

Yes, It Turned Out January 6 Committee Endangered the DOJ Investigation by Withholding the Jeremy Bertino Transcript in June

/25 Comments/in , /by

I often get accused of being an uncritical booster for DOJ on the January 6 investigation. In reality, I have focused my criticism on real problems with the investigation.

In fact several of the criticisms I’ve raised have borne out in recent days, as an attorney-client conflict that should have been identified in June threatened (and still threatens) to bollox the Proud Boy Leader trial, and with it the larger effort to tie Trump’s immediate associates with the crime scene.

Twice, for example, I’ve discussed how central Joe Biggs’ actions the day of the attack were to understanding the larger event. In the first, I described how Biggs’ chumminess with FBI agents led them to overlook his plans for a terrorist attack on the Capitol.

Something brought Joe Biggs, Florida Oath Keepers Kenneth Harrelson and Jason Dolan, along with former Biggs employer Alex Jones to the top of the East steps, along with the mob that Jones brought on false pretenses. Shortly thereafter, Florida Oath Keeper head Kelly Meggs would bring a stack of Oath Keepers through the same door and — evidence suggests — in search of Nancy Pelosi, whom Meggs had talked about killing on election day.

Joe Biggs kicked off the riot on the West side of the building.

Then he went over to the East side to join his former employer Alex Jones and a bunch of Oath Keepers, led by fellow Floridians, to lead a mob back into the Capitol.

West side. Joe Biggs. East side. Joe Biggs.

This is the guy a couple of FBI Agents in Daytona believed was a credible informant against Antifa.

A month later, I described how problematic it was that an AUSA who played a part in Sidney Powell’s efforts to spread false claims about Mike Flynn and Joe Biden before the 2020 election had a role (now reportedly expanded) in overseeing the prosecution of Biggs.

Because of Joe Biggs’ role at the nexus between the mob that attacked Congress and those that orchestrated the mob, his prosecution is the most important case in the entire January 6 investigation. If you prosecute him and his alleged co-conspirators successfully, you might also succeed in holding those who incited the attack on the Capitol accountable. If you botch the Biggs prosecution, then all the most important people will go free.

Which is why it is so unbelievable that DOJ put someone who enabled Sidney Powell’s election season lies about the Mike Flynn prosecution, Jocelyn Ballantine, on that prosecution team.

All that was clear by September 2021.

In that same time period, I was complaining and complaining and complaining about DOJ’s lackadaisical approach to attorney conflicts, first as John Pierce racked up 20 clients, most who served as a firewall to Biggs and the other Proud Boy leaders, and later as DOJ waited three months before inquiring into Sidney Powell’s alleged role in funding some of the Oath Keeper’s defense teams.

The importance to the Trump investigation of getting the militia conspiracies that implicate Roger Stone and Alex Jones right is one of the reasons I argued, in June 2022, that it was urgent for the Proud Boys’ prosecution team to get Jeremy Bertino’s transcript sooner rather than later.

On June 6, DOJ charged the Proud Boy Leaders with sedition. As I noted at the time, the single solitary new overt act described in the indictment involved Jeremy Bertino, Person-1, seeming to have advance knowledge of a plan to occupy the Capitol.

107. At 7:39 pm, PERSON-1 sent two text messages to TARRIO that read, “Brother. ‘You know we made this happen,” and “I’m so proud of my country today.” TARRIO responded, “I know” At 7:44 pm. the conversation continued, with PERSON-1 texting, “1776 motherfuckers.” TARRIO responded, “The Winter Palace.” PERSON-1 texted, “Dude. Did we just influence history?” TARRIO responded, “Let’s first see how this plays out.” PERSON-1 stated, “They HAVE to certify today! Or it’s invalid.” These messages were exchanged before the Senate returned to its chamber at approximately 8:00 p.m. to resume certifying the Electoral College vote.

Just days earlier, as part of a discovery dispute, prosecutors had provided this (dated) discovery index. For several reasons, it’s likely that at least some these entries pertain to Bertino, because the CE ones are from the Charlotte office, close to where he lives, because he’s one of the three uncharged co-conspirators of central importance to the Proud Boys efforts, and because we know FBI did searches on him.

In a hearing during the day on June 9, the Proud Boys’ attorneys accused DOJ of improperly coordinating with the January 6 Committee and improperly mixing politics and criminal justice by charging sedition just before the hearings start. In the hearing there was an extensive and repeated discussion of the deposition transcripts from the committee investigation. AUSA Jason McCullough described that there had been significant engagement on depositions, but that the January 6 Committee wouldn’t share them. As far as he knew, the Committee said they would release them in September, which would be in the middle of the trial. Joe Biggs’ attorney insisted that DOJ had the transcripts, and that they had to get them to defendants.

Judge Tim Kelly ordered prosecutors that, if they come into possession of the transcripts, they turn them over within 24 hours.

Hours later, during the first (technically, second) January 6 Committee hearing, the Committee included a clip from Bertino describing how membership in the Proud Boys had tripled in response to Trump’s “Stand Back and Stand By” comment.

His cooperation with the Committee was not public knowledge. I have no idea whether it was a surprise to DOJ, but if it was, it presented the possibility that, in the guise of cooperating, Bertino had just endangered the Proud Boy sedition prosecution (which wouldn’t be the first time that “cooperative” Proud Boys proved, instead, to be fabricators). At the very least, it meant his deposition raised the stakes on his transcript considerably, because DOJ chose not to charge him in that sedition conspiracy.

Today, in response to a bid by Dominic Pezzola and Joe Biggs to continue the trial until December, DOJ acceded if all defendants agree (Ethan Nordean won’t do so unless he is released from jail). With it they included a letter they sent yesterday to the Committee — following up on one they sent in April — talking about the urgency with which they need deposition transcripts.

We note that the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (“Select Committee”) in its June 9, 2022 and June 13, 2022, hearings extensively quoted from our filings in active litigation and played portions of interviews the Select Committee conducted of individuals who have been charged by the Department in connection with the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

It is now readily apparent that the interviews the Select Committee conducted are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions that have already commenced. Given this overlap, it is critical that the Select Committee provide us with copies of the transcripts of all its witness interviews. As you are aware, grand jury investigations are not public and thus the Select Committee does not and will not know the identity of all the witnesses who have information relevant to the Department’s ongoing criminal investigations. Moreover, it is critical that the Department be able to evaluate the credibility of witnesses who have provided statements to multiple governmental entities in assessing the strength of any potential criminal prosecutions and to ensure that all relevant evidence is considered during the criminal investigations. We cannot be sure that all relevant evidence has been considered without access to the transcripts that are uniquely within the Select Committee’s possession.

The discovery deadline for the Proud Boy case is tomorrow. If DOJ put Bertino before a grand jury and he said something that conflicts with what he told the Committee, it could doom his reliability as a witness, and with it the Proud Boys case, and with it, potentially, the conspiracy case against Trump.

Less than a week before I wrote that, there’s reason to believe, DOJ had flipped a key witness in the case.

It appears that DOJ did not get Jeremy Bertino’s transcript until around December 7. DOJ promised to give transcripts to the defendants within 24-hours after they received them, and DOJ provided 16-January 6 Committee transcripts on December 8.

And we now know the Bertino transcript was utterly critical to preparing for the trial, which is about to kick off. That’s because, in his deposition with the committee, Bertino explained at length both what appeared to be an attempt, by Joe Biggs’ attorney Dan Hull, to tie representation in a civil lawsuit to a deposition in the trial, and because Bertino had conversations with Hull on the day his girlfriend’s home was searched (which is probably when the FBI found the unregistered weapons described in Bertino’s plea paperwork).

A Yes. So I’m going to go back in my memory and try to remember the first time that I spoke with him. I believe it was after I received a civil suit from a church. I reached out to Enrique Tarrio and said, hey, I just got this subpoena or notice of civil suit. I think I need an attorney. And he’s like, oh, well, I’ll talk to Dan, my attorney, and I’ll see if he’ll take it for you. So I said okay. Couple of weeks went by, I didn’t hear anything. I got back in touch with Enrique and asked him, I said, hey, have you talked to your lawyer? And he’s, like, oh, yeah, Dan said he’ll do it for you pro bona because you were stabbed, but he wants to talk to you.

And so he sent me his phone number and I called Dan. I can’t remember when, what date, I don’t remember the specific details, but I do remember calling him and him basically asking me — or I was asking him about representing me in the case and he said oh, sure, sure, sure, we’ll get to that. But he was interested in possibly having me take the stand in the Joe Biggs’ trial about my stabbing to show why Joe was wearing body armor when he was in D.C. because there was a lot of talk after I was stabbed about guys making sure you had a stab proof vest on and stuff like that.

So I think his original intent was to get me on board to help his client. And then the next — I believe the next interaction I had was when I — Jay Thaxton reached out to me and was looking for representation for his deposition. And I said, hey, give this guy Dan a call. I sent him Dan’s number. And I guess Dan took care of his deposition, which I, you know, when I kind of heard what happened there, that’s when I became reluctant to have him represent me in this.

He didn’t seem very stable on the phone. I started to really listen to when he was talking and his rants, and I was, like, okay, this guy– I don’t think this guy’s great for me.

And then the morning that the FBI raided my girlfriend’s house I reached out to him because he was the only attorney that I knew and I was just kind of asking him for advice on how to handle everything.

And I specifically asked him for a retainer, like, can we sign a retainer paperwork, and he was, like, not right now, not right now. And I said okay.

Then a few days later, he asked — he called me — he would call me randomly late at night and go on, like, an hour rant about how the Proud Boys were little girls and just, I mean, off the rail conversations. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was, like, my brain was popping trying to figure out what he was talking about. Then I believe he came to me and said, well, I’m going to — he said, do you want me to accept service on your behalf for the congressional thing, he said, but I’m not going to be able to be there because that date doesn’t work for me, so you’re going to have to go do it on your own.

I said no — and this was on a phone conversation, not a text conversation — I said no. He’s like, well, take 48 hours and think about it. This was on like a — I don’t even remember what day, but I believe it was the day before he actually accepted service from you guys. And he never got confirmation from me to accept service.

He said, well, just take 48 hours and think about it. I said, okay.

Next phone call I got from him was, hey, I accepted service, your date for your deposition is this day, and I’m not going to be there so you’re going to be on your own.

And that is pretty much when I cut off contact, I stopped responding to his calls and his text messages, and I hired Mr. Wellborn.

Bertino’s prior conversations with Hull were made all the more urgent because Norm Pattis, Alex Jones’ attorney, just got kicked off the case after having his license suspended in Connecticut for violating the Sandy Hook protective order, something we all knew was coming since November. [Update: Judge Tim Kelly is letting Pattis stay on the team, though it’s unclear in what role.]

Yesterday and today, Judge Tim Kelly hammered out some plan whereby Hull will be prevented from questioning Bertino, but that in no way eliminates the conflict. That in no way eliminates the risk of having Hull serve as the sole attorney in a case where he had privileged conversations with one of the key cooperating witnesses.

The J6C Committee is significantly to blame about this — at least by the time Bertino’s plea became public, they had to have recognized this conversation needed to be shared with prosecution.

But DOJ itself should have raised conflict issues with Pattis. At the time he joined Biggs’ team last summer, he was already representing Jones’ sidekick, Owen Shroyer, who had a bunch of calls with both Ethan Nordean and Biggs in advance of and during the attack.

Other, more prominent members of the Proud Boys appear to have been in contact with Jones and Shroyer about the events of January 6th and on that day. Records for Enrique Tarrio’s phone show that while the attack on the Capitol was ongoing, he texted with Jones three times and Shroyer five times.124 Ethan Nordean’s phone records reflect that he exchanged 23 text messages with Shroyer between January 4th and 5th, and that he had one call with him on each of those days.125 Records of Joseph Biggs’s communications show that he texted with Shroyer eight times on January 4th and called him at approximately 11:15 a.m. on January 6th, while Biggs and his fellow Proud Boys were marching at and around the Capitol.126

Meanwhile, the emergency motion to keep Pattis on the trial team claimed that both he and Hull are representing Jones.

He was suspended for disclosing confidential medical records to other lawyers working on related matters for our joint client, Alex Jones;

This is insanity! You’ve got two lawyers, both facing major ethical challenges, jointly representing Biggs, Jones, and Shroyer in prosecutions aiming to demonstrate that after Trump asked him to lead a mob to the Capitol, Jones coordinated the delivery of that mob to the Proud Boys.

And Pattis’ suspension will upend the prosecutions of both Shroyer — who at least claimed he would plead guilty at the end of this month — and a guy named Doug Wyatt, who has long been pegged by researchers as one of the rioters who seemed like he might be coordinating with others.

While a lot of people were wailing that J6C was way ahead of DOJ, I was raising concerns about the things that may upend the most important prosecution to date: that Bertino transcript and attorney conflicts.

It turns out I had reserved my complaints for the stuff that, as the trial kicks off, could be the thing that sinks it.

Share this entry

Follow the Money, Break the Attorney-Client Wall of Obstruction

/19 Comments/in , /by

The other day I noted that there were at least 25 lawyers who were key witnesses or subjects of the Trump investigations investigating his parallel attempts to steal classified documents and the 2020 election. I was right to say, “at least.” I forgot Christina Bobb in my count, a key witness for both investigations (though she has always been candid that she did not play the role of a lawyer in the stolen document case).

For all the TV lawyers who spend all their time talking about these investigations, none have really articulated the difficulties this created for this investigation. It created 26 walls of privilege around many of the key events under investigation. There are numerous cases where we know an event or document exists, for example, but actually getting to that evidence or witness testimony involves jumping through extra hoops.

Robert Mueller is not known to have attempted to breach the privilege of Jay Sekulow (who, at least according to Michael Cohen’s testimony, dangled pardons and participated in writing Michael Cohen’s false testimony) or others; Jack Smith doesn’t have that luxury.

Keep that detail in mind as you consider all the reports of subpoenas sent out in the last two months, asking for far more details of the disposition of Trump’s various PAC funds.

CNN was the first to report that Rudy had received a subpoena, asking for information about finances.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has subpoenaed Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani, asking him to turn over records to a federal grand jury as part of an investigation into the former president’s fundraising following the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the subpoena.

The subpoena, which was sent more than a month ago and has not been previously reported, requests documents from Giuliani about payments he received around the 2020 election, when Giuliani filed numerous lawsuits on Trump’s behalf contesting the election results, the person said.

Prosecutors have also subpoenaed other witnesses who are close to Trump, asking specifically for documents related to disbursements from the Save America PAC, Trump’s primary fundraising operation set up shortly after the 2020 election, according to other sources with insight into the probe.

The Guardian, which dates the subpoena to late November, described that it was looking for Rudy’s retainer agreements.

The source said the subpoena sought, among other things, copies of any retainer agreements between Trump and Giuliani, or the Trump campaign and Giuliani, and records of payments and who made those payments.

The WaPo followed with a report describing a subpoena seeking — in addition to documents on Smartmatic and Dominion voting machines — a slew of other financial information.

One part of the four-page legal document asks recipients to reveal if anyone other than themselves are paying for legal representation — and if so, to provide a copy of the retention agreement for that legal work. At least one other former campaign official also received the subpoena, according to that person’s lawyer, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing attention to his client.

[snip]

The subpoena shows the Justice Department is interested in other Trump entities besides the Save America PAC — which The Post and others reported earlier this year was a subject of inquiry by investigators. It seeks “all documents and communications” related to a panoply of other Trump-affiliated groups, including the Make America Great Again PAC, the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee.

Recipients are asked to produce documents related to the “formation, funding and/or use of money” of the groups and to show all employment contracts or correspondence with the groups or officials affiliated with them.

Recipients were also asked for documents related to the genesis of an “Election Defense Fund,” an entity that Trump officials created to raise money from grass-roots donors after the election. Officials later testified to the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, that such a fund never technically existed but was a mechanism to generate funds from people who believed and were outraged by Trump’s false election-fraud claims.

This is likely not just (as the WaPo correctly notes) a follow-up on Cassidy Hutchinson’s cooperation with the investigation. By the time this subpoena was sent, DOJ would have known of several other scams associated with legal representation — and had been investigating Sidney Powell’s own scam (possibly including her payment of Oath Keeper defense attorneys) for 15 months. For example, I showed how Alex Cannon (who has been a key source to these journalists elsewhere), who would necessarily be a witness in the stolen documents case, was implicated in any alleged attempt to silence Hutchinson. He himself was represented, pro bono, by Marc Kasowitz’s firm. The same piece described how the evolving story from Ken Klukowski, who is the lawyer that sent out detailed instructions for the fake electors plot, including observations about how they were exposed legally, was being represented by Big Dick Toilet Salesman Matt Whitaker’s legal firm, perhaps paid for by alleged groper Matt Schlapp.

I recommend you bookmark this Politico piece, which catalogs who was represented by whom for their appearances before the January 6 Committee (a number of people have gotten new lawyers since), because it gives a sense of what kind of witnesses were represented by what kind of lawyers.

Add to the fact that even key participants refused to claim that at least two key players — Jenna Ellis and Boris Epshteyn (the latter of whom had his phone seized in September and who got access to Trump during the period the former President refused to return stolen classified documents by arranging his legal representation) — were playing a legal rather than a PR or logistical role. Plus, a number of key lawyers had up to three different roles in the short post-election time period, which would limit which days they could claim to be working for Trump rather than (in the case of Klukowski) purportedly working for US taxpayers.

The important point, however (and at least one story covering these late subpoenas got this detail wrong), details about your retention of someone, as opposed to the advice offered as part of it, is not privileged. Indeed, Donald Trump and all his frothers cheered wildly when Perkins Coie had to provide billing records to John Durham and Marc Elias had to testify about the ties between Perkins Coie and the Hillary campaign. Durham tried it, successfully with Fusion GPS, as a means to breach privilege. But what he found on at least two occasions was that his conspiracy theories about what Democrats were hiding behind claims of privilege were wrong. Jack Smith already has a lot of documentation documenting real conspiracies to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, such as those notes from Klukowski detailing the laws that might present particular legal risk for Nevada’s fake electors; what he needs now are cooperating witnesses, including, necessarily, some lawyers.

And collecting the records of how false claims about voter fraud paid for efforts to obstruct the subsequent investigation — how Trump duped his followers to ensure that he would be safe while all of them would face jail time — will be one way to map the structure of this larger massive effort. It may also be a way to chip away at the large number of Trump witnesses who — at least before the January 6 Committee — were still telling wildly improbable stories to hide details of Trump’s actions.

Share this entry

BREAKING: James Comer Jumps Right on Hunter Biden’s Dick Pics

/51 Comments/in /by

As expected, James Comer has wasted no time after getting the House Oversight gavel before launching an investigation into Hunter Biden.

ABC reports that, in addition to demanding SARs relating to Hunter Biden (at least some of which Ron Johnson already got), Comer has scheduled testimony for three former Twitter executives — Jim Baker, Yoel Roth, and Vijaya Gadde.

Comer sent letters to former top Twitter employees including former Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde, former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth, and former deputy general counsel James Baker, requesting that they testify at a public hearing during the week of Feb. 6.

“Your attendance is necessary because of your role in suppressing Americans’ access to information about the Biden family on Twitter shortly before the 2020 election,” Comer wrote to the former employees.

Among the things Twitter “suppressed access to” before the November 2020 election, of course, was access to Hunter Biden’s dick pics.

Indeed, we know some of those dick pics were sent out as part of a coordinated campaign pushed by Steve Bannon associate Guo Wengui.

Starting on October 22, 2020, Guo then personally managed minute details of the distribution of pictures and videos. In audio messages he sent to groups of supporters using WhatsApp, which I obtained, he set up a process in which key backers would post Hunter Biden pictures on his streaming website, GTV—a sort of Chinese-language YouTube knockoff—and others would then amplify them. He decreed that much of the material would first be posted by followers living abroad, to help prevent any lawsuits seeking to block the effort.

“Look at the video copied from Hunter’s computer,” Guo said in a WhatsApp messages to underlings on October 27. (He spoke in Chinese. The messages have been translated.) In another message, referring to various Hunter videos, Guo ordered: “Post one right now, one every hour from now on…I want everyone to fully promote it.”

In other words, James Comer has made it his top priority — one of the very first things he did as Chair! — to schedule a hearing so he can learn why Twitter prevented him from accessing pictures of Hunter Biden’s dick leading up to the 2020 election.

It is the top priority of the House GOP to inquire why Twitter took down non-consensually posted revenge porn posted by an associate of a top GOP propagandist.

Update: Axios’ story on this is even worse than ABC’s. It falsely suggests the only thing that Twitter only suppressed access to the NY Post story on the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” (and doesn’t note that even Fox wouldn’t report it), giving Comer a pass for prioritizing Hunter Biden’s dick pics.

Driving the news: House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent letters Wednesday to several former Twitter executives who were involved in the decision to suppress the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden.

Update: Bloomberg’s Billy House also doesn’t think it worth mentioning that James Comer has called a hearing, in part, because Twitter took down non-consensual dick pics.

Share this entry

Matt Taibbi Confesses He Hasn’t Read His Own Twitter Files

/6 Comments/in /by

Matt Taibbi, whom I have taken to calling “#MattyDickPics” for his wails about tweets that were part of a coordinated revenge porn campaign targeting Hunter Biden being taken down, confessed yesterday he knows virtually nothing about his own “Twitter Files” campaign, including what he himself has posted. In response to a Twitter account with just four followers that observed that his campaign had exposed nothing, MattyDickPics tweeted the following:

Before I use MattyDickPics to debunk MattyDickPics, let’s first unpack his claims: He says that, “These DHS/FBI programs are not for building cases” which he judges is “Not even close to the criminal case-building mission.”

Let’s talk about his premise, first of all — the claim that the “mission” is about “criminal case-building.”

The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, the part of DHS that runs what Taibbi calls a “program,” describes its public-facing mission this way:

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leads the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to our cyber and physical infrastructure. We connect our stakeholders in industry and government to each other and to resources, analyses, and tools to help them build their own cyber, communications, and physical security and resilience, in turn helping to ensure a secure and resilient infrastructure for the American people.

In his January 6 Committee testimony, former CISA Director Chris Krebs described the kinds of things CISA would do to help protect the vote.

In terms of the bidding internal to the U.S. Government on who had lead in those three areas [targeting of campaigns, targeting of election infrastructure, disinformation], it was clear, you know, once Jeh Johnson, the prior Secretary in 2017, January of 2017, designated election infrastructure critical infrastructure, it was, you know, CISA had the lead for working with State and local election officials on protecting critical infrastructure — or election infrastructure. That’s the systems. That’s the hardware. That’s the equipment and the processes associated with conducting an election.

Q Ands so can stop you there for a second?

A Yes.

Q Is that primarily protecting against what we would think of as hacking?

A No, not necessarily. It’s, again, critical infrastructure, we had an all-hazards approach. So we worked with election officials to conduct active shooter drills and 13 assessments. We would go look at election warehouses where equipment is stored in the off season, do physical risk assessments. In the wake of hurricanes, we would work with election officials. In fact, Kyle Ardoin, who’s the Secretary of State in Louisiana, in 2000 — the summer of 2020, I guess, where they got hit pretty hard by an election, we helped him work with FEMA and some of the response efforts there to get resources he needed to be able to conduct the election in 2020. So it was not just cyber. That tended to be the public – at least what the public cared about or the media cared about, just because it’s 2016, but it was – again, it was an all hazards. And we did — I don’t want to put numbers on it, because I don’t recall, again, off the top of my head, but a significant number of physical assessments of election facilities.

[snip]

Q You talked earlier about the infrastructure and protecting that. How did you work with State officials to make sure that their – to help them ensure that their equipment was safe and secure?

A We had a number of different offerings that we had. There’s an entire catalog. There’s an election security catalog. It’s not in here because it’s thick. But we would go out and conduct things like security and vulnerability assessments. We could do red team. We could do fairly in-depth assessments of voter registration database configurations 1) We had a, what’s known as cyber hygiene scan that they would sign up for and we’d do a regular scan to see if anything touching the internet was mis- – well, not misconfigured, but running an old vulnerable version. We developed in the summer before the election a product called – or tool called Crossfeed, which was a little bit more in-depth of assessing vulnerabilities of systems and websites that are touching the internet. ~ And then we would provide them reports and technical assistance on how they might secure things.

The stuff that MattyDickPics is concerned about was an effort to facilitate state election officials’ ability to rebut false claims about elections.

Q We’ve seen some documents that were produced by DHS relating to efforts to connect with social media platforms, Twitter, for example, to working with State and local officials to try to address claims that were being made on Twitter that were false.

A Uhhh,

Q Are you familiar generally with that initiative?

A I think generally, yes. And I gave an example of the 2018 election, at least, how we were able to connect I think it was Ohio with one of the platforms.

Q And it seemed as if that was a fairly robust — I was going to say operation. That’s probably too strong a word. But there was a fairly – it looked to be, from the documents I’ve seen, a fairly well-coordinated effort to put State officials in touch with the social media platforms and try to provide the information necessary to address what were false claims in their respective jurisdictions.

A I think certainly the efforts to make those connections was a priority. We had frequent — I think it was monthly – at least monthly I think monthly, let me put it that way meetings between interagency partners, so FBI, DNI, and CISA, with representatives from the social media platforms. And we sometimes did those out in California. You know, I would attend every now and then some of those meetings. Now, State and local partners were not there. This was just making sure the Federal Government and the social media platforms were connected and were sharing kind of our understanding of how things were playing out, what our concerns were.

None of that, CISA’s role in information-sharing, is law enforcement. The one example Krebs mentioned that involved an attempted hack, CISA passed off to the FBI and intelligence agencies.

And there was a State, Delaware observed an unknown actor trying to exploit an Oracle database vulnerability that they had had patched. So what we were able to do is Delaware let us know. We said, that’s interesting. ~ But because we were integrated with the FBI and the intelligence community and others, we could actually say, hey, 12 guys so it wasn’t just for our benefit, like | said, decision support. We were able to share it with our operational partners for them to go do whatever they need to do. Soit was a functional operational watch cell, also coordinating situational awareness, coordinating action. And that was and that was the day.

CISA didn’t ask for anything back from Twitter because CISA is not a law enforcement agency (note: one other thing MattyDickPics is referencing is that a Signal thread the FBI used for sharing information was treated as one way, but according to Chan, the social media companies would respond by other channels). It has no law enforcement mandate. Is has no case-building mandate.

With regard to CISA — and MattyDickPics is not alone in this gross misunderstanding of CISA’s mandate or legal status — MattyDickPics’ entire premise is false.

But that also means his complaint is wrong. Is MattyDickPics complaining that people make an effort to correct errors about the election? Would he prefer that local election authorities try to chase down rumors and false claims themselves, even as they’re putting in 16-hour days trying to run an election? Does he think that deliberate misinformation about elections, like non-consensually posted dick pics, must be protected on social media sites? Is he angry — as Elon Musk seems to be — that social media sites choose not to be the vehicle for messaging that makes it harder to conduct successful elections?

If you’re complaining that an information-sharing agency is sharing information, then ultimately your complaint is that you don’t think that information should be shared, that you don’t think election officials should make an effort to ensure information about elections is clear and accurate — or at least, you don’t think the federal government should do anything to protect elections. If that’s your view, own it.

Even with FBI, MattyDickPics’ premise that the mission is “case-building” is partly wrong. In addition to its law enforcement mission, FBI has a counterintelligence mission, which would cover a good deal of interaction with social media sites. Indeed, a great deal of entire threads of MattyDickPics’ rants pertain to the FBI passing on assessments about such operations, as when accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency were shared. The FBI has built several cases against the IRA, but that’s not the primary goal. The primary goal is to track how Russia and China and Iran attempt to interfere in our country.

Some of what MattyDickPics seems to misunderstand about this is that foreign spooks will pretend to be Americans as part of their efforts to fuck in democratic elections. For example, MattyDickPics has said nothing about the most significant hack-and-disinformation campaign from 2020, an Iranian attempt to pose as Proud Boys to send messages to Democrats to discourage them from voting. It’s not impossible that some of what he has portrayed as FBI interest in “Americans” was actually an effort to adopt the identity of Proud Boys — effectively maligning right wing Trump supporters — as cover for their operation. This kind of FBI investigation might never result in charges — because you’re never going to arrest the Iranian spooks behind it — but posing as American Proud Boys to interfere in the election could be charged under FARA laws.

One can complain about FBI’s dual mission — lord knows I have! But one cannot claim that FBI has exclusively a case-building mission and be entirely accurate.

Still, maybe all that can be excused because MattyDickPics decided to respond to a 4-follower Twitter account that also misunderstood the premise of some of what this information sharing is about.

It’s the claim that the FBI “program,” at least, is not about building cases, that I find outrageous.

Among the single screen caps that Twitter Files followers have latched onto most — along with one about Adam Schiff inappropriately and unsuccessfully trying to use Twitter’s QAnon rules to protect staffers (I won’t link that because MattyDickPics doxxed the person in question), a CIA official asking to be included in a public event, and the NSA asking whether Twitter still prohibited Dataminr from sharing the “firehose” of Twitter content with intelligence agencies (they did, though under Elmo, the Saudis and Qataris will reportedly be given access to it) — is this one, which they claim is proof that the FBI asked for location data without legal process:

As a threshold matter, note what this is not: an email from Elvis Chan, the guy in charge of San Francisco’s Election Command Post, to Twitter. It is an email from the National Election Command Post to Chan. MattyDickPics doesn’t explain how Twitter got this. He has “censored” how Chan sent this to Twitter.

Before I get into the content, let me repeat some background that two of Elmo’s pets, at least, claim to be familiar with, which I laid out here. Here’s how Chan explained the actions of both the National and San Francisco Election Command Post, which is behind a great deal of the FBI to Twitter requests MattyDickPics wails about.

A. During FBI San Francisco’s 2020 election command post, which I believe was held from the Friday before the election through election night, that Tuesday at midnight, information would be provided by other field offices and FBI headquarters about disinformation, specifically about the time, place or manner of elections in various states. These were passed to FBI San Francisco’s command post, which I mentioned to you before I was the daytime shift commander, and we would relay this information to the social media platforms where these accounts were detected. So I do not believe we were able to determine whether the accounts that were posting time, place or manner of election disinformation, whether they were American or foreign.

Q. But you received reports, I take it, from all over the country about disinformation about time, place and manner of voting, right?

A. That is — we received them from multiple field offices, and I can’t remember. But I remember many field offices, probably around ten to 12 field offices, relayed this type of information to us. And because DOJ had informed us that this type of information was criminal in nature, that it did not matter where the — who was the source of the information, but that it was criminal in nature and that it should be flagged to the social media companies. And then the respective field offices were expected to follow up with a legal process to get additional information on the origin and nature of these communications.

Q. So the Department of Justice advised you that it’s criminal and there’s no First Amendment right to post false information about time, place and manner of voting?

[snip]

A. That was my understanding.

Q. And did you, in fact, relay — let me ask you this. You say manner of voting. Were some of these reports related to voting by mail, which was a hot topic back then?

A. From my recollection, some of them did include voting by mail. Specifically what I can remember is erroneous information about when mail-in ballots could be postmarked because it is different in different jurisdictions. So I would be relying on the local field office to know what were the election laws in their territory and to only flag information for us. Actually, let me provide additional context. DOJ public integrity attorneys were at the FBI’s election command post and headquarters. So I believe that all of those were reviewed before they got sent to FBI San Francisco.

Q. So those reports would come to FBI San Francisco when you were the day commander at this command post, and then FBI San Francisco would relay them to the various social media platforms where the problematic posts had been made, right?

A. That is correct.

Q. And then the point there was to alert the social media platforms and see if they could be taken down, right?

A. It was to alert the social media companies to see if they violated their terms of service.

[snip]

Q. And this command post was chosen to be — I mean, it addresses nationwide election-related information, right?

A. So every field office, every FBI field office was mandated by headquarters to stand at a command post at least on election day. And FBI San Francisco was responsible for relaying any time, place or manner disinformation or malign-foreign-influence information to the social media companies as well as accepting any referrals from the social media companies.

Q. So FBI San Francisco had the special job of referring concerns to social media companies?

[snip]

THE WITNESS: Yes, and the reason for that is because the majority of the social media companies are headquartered in FBI San Francisco’s territory. [my emphasis]

That is, much of this activity (including this screen cap in particular) came in the context of a DOJ Public Integrity determination that lying about the time, place, or manner of voting might be a crime, and — Chan’s understanding at least — referrals to Twitter had already been vetted by a Public Integrity prosecutor.

As I’ve noted, this is not a frivolous claim. In early 2021, one of Bill Barr’s closest associates, Seth DuCharme, then serving as EDNY US Attorney, charged a Jack Posobiec associate named Douglass Mackey with violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act for doing this kind of thing at scale, by tweeting that users could text their vote in rather than show up and cast it, in 2016. Almost 5,000 people responded to this campaign and texted in their “vote” for President. It took two years and some HuffPo reporting before Mackey was identified and several more years to charge him.

Mackey is aggressively contesting the charge, including on First Amendment grounds; his trial is scheduled to start on March 13.

There’s even a tie between Mackey’s campaign and Elmo’s efforts to restore white supremacists to the platform. Right wingers have been lobbying Elmo to reinstate the pseudonymous Ricky_Vaughn99 account.

That’s what this is about: Efforts, some conducted at scale, to suppress the vote of certain Americans by lying to them about how or when or where to vote. And the involvement of prosecutors on the front end indicates that this was not just an effort to alert Twitter to misinformation so it could remove it if it chose to. This activity — which, again, makes up a great deal of what MattyDickPics has wailed about — was conducted in the context of law enforcement investigations.

But MattyDickPics has already confirmed that. The very screen cap in question — one of the screen caps that MattyDickPics’ frothers are most outraged about (caveating, again, that MattyDickPics chose to “censor” how Chan actually passed this onto Twitter) — asks for the following regarding 25 accounts that are “spread[ing] misinformation about the upcoming election:”

  1. Coordination between [San Francisco’s Field Office] and Twitter to determine whether the accounts identified below have violated Twitter’s terms of service and may be subject any actions deemed appropriate by Twitter.
  2. The issuance of preservation letters regarding any of the accounts identified below to preserve subscriber information and content information pending the issuance of legal process.
  3. Any location information associated with the accounts that Twitter will voluntarily provide to aid the FBI in assigning any follow-up deemed necessary to the appropriate FBI field office.

MattyDickPics has focused primarily on Bullet 1: If this violates Twitters terms of service, then — the FBI request suggests — Twitter can choose to do what it wants. That’s the “censorship” of efforts to dupe people into wasting their ability to participate in democracy that MattyDickPics is so outraged about.

Bullet 2, however, single-handedly refutes MattyDickPics’ claim from yesterday. Chan was supposed to ask for preservation letters, a request that Twitter preserve the account long enough that the FBI could follow up with a subpoena and/or warrant to get the subscriber information and then the content. This screen cap is explicitly about FBI’s case-building mission. MattyDickPics proved, on December 16, that MattyDickPics’ claims yesterday are false.

And even Bullet 3 — the reason this was deemed such an abuse — is about building a case. The National Command Post was not asking, voluntarily, for information that would help it identify whose mother’s basement this disinformation campaign was launched from, whether Brooklyn or Iran. Rather, it was asking for location information sufficiently detailed such that DOJ could assign follow-up leads to a US Attorney’s office that might be able to prosecute it. In fact, Mackey is challenging his prosecution, in part, by challenging venue in Brooklyn, a subject on which Judge Nicholas Garaufis has reserved judgment. That request for location information — accompanied as it was by a request for preservation order to get location information with a warrant — was all part of building a case.

One can certainly argue that the prosecution of Mackey and people like him for trying to affect the election by duping people out of their vote is a violation of the First Amendment, just like one can argue, as MattyDickPics is, that Twitter should be forced to permit users to use the platform to dupe others — Mackey allegedly targeted Blacks and Spanish speakers — out of casting their vote.

That’s a debate we can have.

But there’s no debate about whether these Command Post requests came in a framework that envisioned the possibility of case-building. MattyDickPics has already proven that MattyDickPics is lying about that.

Share this entry

At Least 25 Lawyers Are Subjects or Witnesses in the Various Trump Investigations

/59 Comments/in , , /by

Between the release of the January 6 Committee transcripts and the unsealing of some grand jury orders from last summer, I’ve been pondering how many lawyers were central to Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election. Consider this table, for example, which is based on two separate sets of subpoenas (June, November) sent out to the swing states Trump tried to steal. Only the people marked in blue are not lawyers.

Eighteen people on this list — all people who played key roles in one or various plots — have a colorable claim to have played the role of an attorney, though the J6C transcripts show that for some — Boris Epshteyn and Jenna Ellis, for example — there was some dispute about whether they were functioning as lawyers or some other role, like spokesperson. And Sidney Powell was famously formally separated from the campaign.

Add those 18 people to the lawyers on this list, which includes state officials reported to have had their phones seized, Jeffrey Clark (who’s not on the fake elector warrants but is a subject based on other factors), Mike Lindell (whose phone was seized as part of the Colorado investigation into accessing voter machines) as well as five other lawyers known to be witnesses to key parts of the various plots.

Four of these people — the two Pats, Greg Jacob, and Marc Short — were reported to have had Trump’s Executive Privilege claims overridden by Chief Judge Beryl Howell for follow-on appearances before grand juries.

With seven more lawyers added to the list, that’s a total of 25 witnesses, all of whom have to be treated with kid gloves to avoid blowing the entire case.

That’s one reason I’m interested in a detail from the February 24 J6C transcripts from Michael McDonald (NV GOP Chair) and James DeGraffenreid (another NV fake elector). Both men pled the Fifth — there were aspects of Nevada’s fake elector certificates that even Trump’s people admitted presented more serious legal problems. Neither man is an attorney. And both men claimed to have retained the Signal and Telegram texts they had sent using their phones.

Q On your personal devices, did you use any secured messaging applications like Signal, telephone [sic], or WhatsApp?

A Yes, sir.

Q And did you search those applications for any materials that might be responsive to the subpoena?

A Yes, sir.

We saw that DOJ used Scott Perry’s role in the Jeffrey Clark node to identify unprivileged communications (though that approach also yielded a lot of junk communications). I would imagine that that makes people like Mike Roman (who ferried fake elector certificates around but has been dropped from subpoenas) and the two NV fake electors particularly important to chiseling away at privilege claims.

Share this entry

Donald Trump’s Contemptuous Leaking

/89 Comments/in , /by

A month ago, I noted that several stories about Trump’s engagement of a firm to search for additional stolen documents were wildly inconsistent.

WaPo and CNN both have stories about searches by a professional firm on additional Trump properties, looking for stolen classified documents.

In addition to at least three paragraphs that are affirmatively misleading (one that does not push back on a bullshit quote about how cooperative Trump has been, one that described Trump’s outright obstruction as a “breakdown … in trust,” and one that claims Trump is trying to avoid another high profile search when the further search was ordered by Chief Judge Beryl Howell) WaPo describes only searches of Bedminster and, later, Trump Tower.

Trump’s legal team hired an outside firm to carry out the search of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and, more recently, Trump Tower in New York, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

In one paragraph, it describes that Trump’s lawyers told DOJ they did not turn up more documents, but in a follow-up, WaPo describes an attestation that may or may not apply to just Bedminster.

I did the post because of the inconsistency, but also because, in the past, when we’ve seen aggressive pitches from Trump like this (his cover story about putting a lock on the storage facility where he had stashed his stolen documents is another example), it has generally been an attempt to get ahead of something really damning.

Two days later, WaPo seemed to report that Trump had managed to get through whatever damning bit he was trying to hide. It stated as fact that Chief Judge Beryl Howell would not hold Trump in contempt.

A federal judge on Friday declined to hold former president Donald Trump’s office in contempt for not fully complying with a May subpoena to return all classified documents in his possession, according to people familiar with the proceedings.

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell told Justice Department lawyers and Trump’s legal team to come to an agreement themselves over what actions or assurances by Trump’s office would satisfy the government, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sealed court proceedings.

“The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Washington Post.

But a report from Alan Feuer yesterday describes that Howell has not yet made a decision about whether to hold Trump in contempt or not.

At a court hearing held behind closed doors last month, Judge Howell put off ruling on the government’s contempt request. The judge has still not issued a decision, according to the people familiar with the matter.

As Feuer describes it, on Wednesday, Howell ordered Trump to share the names of the people who did the search with DOJ. Trump had tried to shield those names — purportedly out of concern about leaks, which has consistently been a bullshit line Trump’s lawyers have used. But it’s more likely his team was concerned that the PIs would have to appear before the grand jury themselves.

A federal judge has ordered lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump to give the government the names of the private investigators who searched Mr. Trump’s properties late last year for any remaining classified documents, part of what appeared to be a step by the Justice Department toward questioning the investigators about their efforts, two people familiar with the matter said.

The order, issued on Wednesday by Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington,

[snip]

The more recent spat began when prosecutors asked Mr. Trump’s lawyers for the names of the investigators who searched the storage facility and other Trump properties — among them, Mar-a-Lago; Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.; and Trump Tower in New York.

According to the people familiar with the matter, the lawyers offered to make the investigators available for questioning but wanted their identities shielded by a protective order, out of concern that the government might leak the information to the news media.

It’s certainly possible Trump worries that allowing an independent interview of these people will disclose areas where they were not permitted to search (or other games like the others Trump already got caught playing).

Whatever it is, though, this suggests that Trump continued to bullshit the press after his first attempts to do so regarding the follow-on searches.

And the lies to the press aren’t going to keep Trump from being held in contempt (and then jailed until he complies with a subpoena).

Share this entry

Norm Pattis’ Sandy Hook Fuckup May Roil January 6 Investigation

/21 Comments/in , /by

Connecticut judge Barbara Bellis suspended Alex Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, for sending the medical information of Connecticut Sandy Hook plaintiffs to lawyers from both sides of the Texas Sandy Hooks lawsuit.

“Simply put, given his experience, there is no acceptable excuse for his misconduct,” Judge Barbara Bellis said in a court decision released Thursday.

Pattis is one of the state’s most well-known defense attorneys. He said he plans to appeal the decision.

“We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency. There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for the respondent’s misconduct,” Bellis wrote.

She goes on to say that because of this, the court agrees with the Disciplinary Counsel’s recommendation to suspend Pattis from practicing law for several months.

As Pattis noted in a statement to NBC, however, he’s not just Alex Jones’ attorney. He’s also one of two lawyers representing Joe Biggs in the Proud Boys case, which is in the final day of voir dire today. And he represents Jones sidekick Owen Shroyer, who is tentatively due to plead guilty at the end of the month.

The Proud Boy defendants are already asking for a delay of their trial so they can read the January 6 Committee transcripts (though note they’ve had 16 of those transcripts since early December). But this decision seems likely to cause a delay, because the case really is difficult for one attorney to manage, but Judge Tim Kelly will want to avoid any claim by Biggs that he was no competently represented by Pattis.

Update: Here’s the ruling, which among other things describes how it happened that Pattis shared such highly confidential information — after blowing the protective order early in the case!

Share this entry

Shrug: Beau Harrison’s Renewed Memory about Trump’s Lunge

/44 Comments/in , /by

One trick of trying to map the DOJ investigations into Trump onto the testimony available from the January 6 Committee is that so many Trump associates could be witnesses on so many aspects of the investigation.

I noted, for example, how Alex Cannon is a direct witness to matters pertaining to the stolen documents, Trump’s Big Lie, Trump’s misuse of money raised to combat voter fraud, and the effort to take care of Cassidy Hutchinson. When Stephen Miller appeared before a grand jury twice in eight days, did he appear on different issues, or the same? When the two Pats, Cipollone and Philbin, split a long day in grand jury rooms, were they both exclusively in a January 6 grand jury, or did they also testify before the stolen documents one?

And when three Trump aides — Dan Scavino, William Russell, and Beau Harrison– appeared before a grand jury on December 1, did they all appear before the same grand jury and for the same prong of the investigation? Their subpoenas were first reported in a NYT article that revealed the focus on Trump’s use of PAC financing. All three continued their association with Trump after he left the White House. But that doesn’t mean their testimony only relates to the financial part of the investigation. Beau Harrison’s two interviews with J6C reveal why.

I’m not aware that an interview with Russell has been released (more on him here).

Scavino refused to cooperate with J6C, for which DOJ declined to prosecute him, though the J6C report did focus on how Scavino has been paid by Save America PAC.

[F]rom July 2021 to the present, Save America has been paying approximately $9,700 per month to Dan Scavino,171 a political adviser who served in the Trump administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff.172 Save America was also paying $20,000 per month to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC. Hudson Digital LLC was registered in Delaware twenty days after the attack on the Capitol, on January 26, 2021,173 and began receiving payments from Save America on the day it was registered.174 Hudson Digital LLC has received payments totaling over $420,000, all described as “Digital consulting.”175 No website or any other information or mention of Hudson Digital LLC could be found online.176 Though Hudson Digital LLC is registered as a Delaware company, the FEC ScheduleB listing traces back to an address belonging to Dan and Catherine Scavino.177

That leaves just Beau Harrison’s two J6C appearances (April 7, 2022; August 18, 2022).

Harrison played an Advance role in the White House and was one of several witnesses with incomplete memories about January 6 who reported to Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato. In fact, Harrison shared a small office with Ornato (parts of whose unpersuasive testimony I tweeted about here).

Three things stick out about Harrison’s testimony. First, Trump’s Executive Assistant Molly Michael (who is a known witness in the stolen documents prong of the investigation and who was interviewed by the committee on March 24, 2022) named Harrison in her list of people who was employed by Save America PAC.

And how many other people from the White House staff did go onto Florida to work with him, your current colleagues or otherwise associated with the former President?

A A small handful

Q Who else was on that list besides you, Ms. Michael?

A Someone that works for the First Lady, Hayley D’Antuono.

Q Okay. She was in the White House and now works in Florida for the First Lady, correct?

A Yes.

Q Okay. Who else?

A Someone that worked in operations named Beau Harrison.

Q Okay. Mr. Harrison works for – he’s actually engaged to Ms. D’Antuono, right?

A That’s correct.

Q Okay. And what’s his role currently down in Florida?

A He continues in an operations role.

Q Okay. Are they all, like you, employed by the Save America PAC?

A Yes.

When asked about Save America in his second interview in August, here’s how Harrison answered.

Q Has anyone told you to not provide certain information, even if it’s the answer to a question that the select committee poses?

A No.

Q And then just a final set of questions. Are you receiving any assistance from anyone or entity to help cover your legal costs related to the select committee only, nothing else?

A Yes. I’m not personally — I’m not personally paying for legal representation.

Q Do you know who is, who’s covering those costs?

A Not specifically, which may be something I probably should know, but that I don’t Know.

Q Do you know what the Save America PAC is?

A Yes

Q Do you know if they have any role in helping to cover your legal costs or find somebody who would cover your legal costs?

A They — I don’t know if they are covering them. They are associated with — with whoever — whoever it may be that is.

Q Do you have a contact there who — who you talk to about issues related to this?

A The only — the only time it’s ever come up — or the only contact, you know, related to this would be when I got the initial phone call, whenever, you know, whenever, a couple months ago. whenever it was. And I contacted Justin Clark.

Like Cassidy Hutchinson, Justin Clark helped arrange for a lawyer. Like Cassidy Hutchinson, Stefan Passantino represented Harrison, including in this second interview.

A far more important part of Harrison’s testimony pertains to Trump’s reported request to be taken to the Capitol on January 6. Though the final J6C report focused closely on the story Cassidy Hutchinson first relayed about Trump lunging in his limo when informed he couldn’t be driven to the Capitol, it makes no mention of Harrison’s testimony on the issue.

In his first interview, Harrison claimed not to remember much of anything unusual about the day. The security alerts he elevated to Mark Meadows, including Ashli Babbit’s shooting, were just normal security alerts, per that testimony. Though he played a security liaison role, there was virtually nothing unusual about the day when Trump’s mob attacked the Capitol.

In that first appearance, over and over, Harrison denied recalling details of Trump’s interest in going to the Capitol. After explaining that he learned of Trump’s call to walk to the Capitol from Twitter, Harrison provided these answers about specific knowledge of discussions of Trump going to the Capitol.

Q Do you know whether Mr. Ornato or anybody else talked to the Secret Service or anyone about making arrangements for the President to goto the Capitol that day?

A I mean, I think that — again, I don’t know this for fact or specifics, but remember, you know, the – kind of the understanding was If for whatever reason it were to come up, it should be directed as with any game-time decision, it should be directed to the Secret Service, to, you know, Bob Engel or Robert Engel, you know, if that could happen.

Q Okay. And after the President said he was going to march or even shortly before, but on that day of January 6th, are you aware of those conversations or communications happening with the Secret Service or otherwise?

A No.

In his second interview, however, Harrison had a much clearer memory of Bobby Engel stopping in the office he shared with Tony Ornato than he did before Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly in June (after she got a new lawyer to replace Passantino). In his revised memory, Harrison said that Bobby Engel described Trump “shrugg[ing] off” the instructions from Secret Service that he would not be taken to the Capitol.

Q When the President came back, do you remember Bobby Engel ever coming to your office or the office you shared with s Mr. Ornato?

A Yes

Q Tell us about that. What was he there for? What happened? What did you guys talk about?

A So as Bobby Engel normally would do, so, you know, the limo would drop off, depending on where the President was, if they were arriving on the south grounds, you know, if the President was going up to the residence, it would stop at the portico there, you know, kind of the center of the residence. If he was going the — the President was going back to his office, they would pull forward. And, you know, he could walk. There’s a little pathway from. you know, you’ve probably seen that. There was a, you know, a pathway from the drop point to the corner of the, you know, the door of the in between the Oval Office and the Rose Garden that he would use. Tony — or Bobby would be in the car with him and would, obviously, he wouldn’t go back into the Oval Office. But he would continue through the West Wing back through his office in the EEOB. You know, one of the common things that he would do would be he would, you know, pop in our office and just kind of give us an update of how the trip went or what — really anything.

And so when they got back that afternoon, again, I don’t remember the time, when they got back. I remember Bobby popped into our office. It was the three of us — Tony, Bobby, myself. And he gave an update of, you know, kind of the events there at the Capitol.

I have a memory of Bobby saying that, before the President went onstage there at the offstage announce area, you know, the whole question of should he go up to the Capitol, should he go up to the Capitol. That was kind of getting tossed around. A lot of it was — was getting directed back to Bob Engel as kind of the deciding, you know, with the events in real time, you know. Anything like that would go — would run through Bobby.

I remember Bobby, you know, saying, hey, you know, we can’t do that. You know, we have no plan for that. There are no plans to do — to do that. You know, we couldn’t — we couldn’t secure that in this amount, short amount of time, on and on like, you know, as we talked about last time. You know, further than, that he said the President went on stage, gave his remarks. And this is Bobby told Tony and myself that, you know, he was like — it was almost like he had to ask. And then when he was told that, hey, you can’t go to the Capitol, he was like, you know, kind of, again, shrugged it off and was like, all right, at least I asked. And that was it.

Now, there are a lot of ways in which this (and other parts of his) testimony conflicts with what Harrison had already said, what Engel testified to later, what records subsequently shared with the committee (and so far more readily available to DOJ) revealed.

But it’s not this conflict that I find most interesting. It’s the conflict between what Tony Ornato had to say about talking to Harrison and what Harrison had testified to months earlier.

When Liz Cheney asked Ornato whether he had spoken to anyone after Hutchinson’s testimony, he admitted speaking to the Secret Service people about Hutchinson’s testimony, but claimed that a conversation he had with Harrison was about real estate.

Ms. Cheney. Anyone else from the administration?

The Witness. I have talked to [Beau] Harrison, who has left the — Trump’s — at this point, but nothing about any testimony or anything of that nature. It was more about real estate and him moving to the area.

Ms. Cheney. Did you speak with the Secret Service spokesperson following Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony?

The Witness. I recall, that day after Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, going to the Secret Service Counsel and being in his office and then the Secret Service spokesperson asking me about what my recollection was of that story. And I relayed that that is not a story I recollect and I don’t recall that story happening and the first time hearing it is when she had said it.

Harrison told the story differently. In an exchange just after Passantino piped in to make sure the record reflected Harrison saying that Trump “shrugged it off” rather than “shrugged his shoulders” in response to being told he couldn’t go to the Capitol, Harrison assured the committee he would know if this kind of conflict had taken place.

Q Uh-huh. so I think [redacted] had asked you about there was public reporting about a heated argument that occurred in the — and I’ll take it in two parts. First the heated argument, did you hear anything to that effect?

A No.

Q And how about what, as you said, you described, you saw Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony on TV. Is that — I want to make sure heard you correctly. Was that the first time you heard that testimony in terms of what occurred in the vehicle, as she said, relayed by Mr. Engel?

A Yes. Her — the story that was — the story that was told during her public testimony was the first I had heard of you know, anything like that being described.

Q Was there any kind of discussion, putting aside the testimony, but the days following, did you learn of anything that occurred that was more than just a back and forth of as you’re describing, of can I go and I guess Mr. Engel saying no? Was there anything in that range of more of a request, anger, heated 6 argument, altercation, anything?

A No.

Q Did you see —

A I would — I’m sorry

Q That’s okay.

A I would also add that, if something like had been described had occurred, I percent would have known about it and would have heard that.

Q And why do you say that?

A Because that is something that would have, you know — that’s — that’s the report that Bobby would share when he got — when he got back. You know, that would fall into the, hey, how’d it go and he’d be like, oh, you know. like, you know, this — this — let me tell you. But —

Q If it was shared only with Mr. Ornato, would Mr. Ornato have shared that with you?

A If it was shared with Tony, yes, Tony would have shared it with me.

Harrison similarly assured the committee, even less convincingly, that there’s no way Trump’s limo was left running to keep open the possibility of a trip to the Capitol without him knowing.

But then the committee asked Harrison, three months before Ornato would answer the same question, whether he had spoken to Ornato about this.

In addition to explaining that he’s “kind of a big brother” to Ornato’s son, Harrison revealed that Ornato called Harrison immediately after (during, maybe!?!?) Hutchinson’s testimony.

Q What about with Tony Ornato, have you talked to him about January 6th or anything that happened on January 6th before your testimony today?

A The only — the only, you know, time that we — again. Tony and I are personal friends and have talked about — you know, I’m — I’m kind of a big brother to his son and to, you know — he — we’re personal friends. The only thing that we’ve talked about on this matter is during Cassidy’s testimony, he just — he basically said, can you — you know, can you believe this? And — and that was that. You know, nothing further — nothing further. you know, was — was discussed on the matter of — aside from the fact of like, you know. where is this coming from?

Q How did he say that to you? Did he call you? Did he send you a text message?

A I believe it was a phone call. And — and I think it was more of, you know, he was like, did I — you know, did I miss something or am I — am I — you know, clearly this did not happen, but how — how is this being — you know, where is this story even coming from or, you know, where could this even, you 12 know, be coming from.

Q In that conversation, did he — he told you it didn’t happen? What portion of the testimony did he say didn’t happen in that phone call with you?

A I –well, I mean, as it was described when — you know, the whole — the whole story of — the whole story of Bob Engel returning to our office, you know, and going into the — going into the — you know, the story about the President being irate and, you know, the President grabbing Bob Engel’s neck and grabbing for the steering wheel, you know, that was the part he was like, you know — like, did that happen? Did the — you know, did that — did — was that even discussed? Was that — did that ever come up? And at that point I said —

Q In that —

A I’m sorry, go ahead.

Q Go ahead. I’m sorry. I cut you off right before you were about to say what you said in response.

A And I’m saying, no, you know, the first — the first I had even — I have ever even heard of this was. you know, just this afternoon, this afternoon when it was being described, you know, that way on TV.

Q In that conversation, did Mr. Ornato kind of relay his recollection of the events to you?

A That, I don’t remember. But, I mean, I don’t think he went, you know, play by play of what happened. I think it was mainly just kind of just, you know, kind of shock as to, you know, getting associated with and being the kind of the source of that type of information.

Harrison and Ornato could — and one day may — testify in defense of Trump at some trial. On the issue of whether he responded angrily when told he could not going to the Capitol, their testimony might just present a conflicting account to that of Hutchinson and others (and some documentary records).

But on the issue of the conversation that Harrison had with Ornato, there’s a dramatic conflict, real estate versus a direct response to Hutchinson’s testimony, possibly even as she testified.

And that’s what I mean about how interlocking all these issues are. Sure, Harrison may have been interviewed about being paid out of funds originally raised based on false claims of voter fraud.

But it’s hard to separate those payments from his evolving testimony about that shrug.

Update: At the very end of Ornato’s testimony, after learning Engel’s testimony conflicted with his and learning that Hutchinson had shared Signal texts Ornato had sent her, he described speaking to both Engel and Harrison during Hutchinson’s testimony, a clear conflict with his earlier answer about real estate.

A No, sir. The only time I had reached out to Mr. Engel was when Cassidy Hutchinson was testifying during her – as she was testifying, and I was I wasn’t watching it, was called to put it on, and I was shocked and surprised of her testimony and called Mr. Engel and asked him, What’s she talking about? And his response was, I don’t know.

And then I then proceeded to say I said, Let me listen to the rest of this now. I have no idea And that was the only time I had — I had reached out to Mr. Engel. I actually reached out to Mr. Harrison as well, because I knew Beau was in my office. And I said, Beau, what’s she talking about? And Beau said the same thing. He said, I don’t know. I don’t remember her being in your office. that was just shocked and surprised at – of the testimony, and I did reach out 9 during her testimony, I believe, to the both of them to ask that. ~ But, at that point, after I~ my head settled down, I didn’t discuss it any further.

Share this entry

How the January 6 Committee Investigation Maps onto DOJ’s Known Investigation

/47 Comments/in , , /by

I’m going to attempt to do a live post mapping what we’re learning from the January 6 Committee investigation onto what we know about the multi-prong DOJ investigations. Before I do so, however, I want to point out several ways this matters, by showing how the multiple investigations intersect and how testimony to J6C may be useful for DOJ.

Ken Klukowski’s two interviews

I raised one example in this thread on Ken Klukowski, the lawyer who wrote the memo associated with John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark meant to justify a late-December DOJ intervention in Georgia. Klukowski is one of four people (and three lawyers) involved in a grand jury proceeding partially unsealed in December. By May 2022, DOJ had shown probable cause that one of his email accounts would include evidence of a crime, but DOJ also spent much of last summer working through the dicey privilege problems posed by an investigation involving a bunch of lawyers.

We now know the grand jury matters were unsealed after such time as DOJ first got some of the J6C transcripts, per this filing in the Proud Boys case, which shows DOJ passed on 16 Proud Boy transcripts before December 8.

Klukowski sat for two interviews with J6C — one on February 15, 2022, when he came off as a cooperative witness, and one on June 10, when the committee asked him about a bunch of documents involving John Eastman that Judge David Carter had released, some under a crime-fraud exception. At least during the interviews, Klukowski was represented by lawyers from Matt “Big Dick Toilet Salesman” Whitaker’s firm; see this exchange from Justin Caporale’s interview about how Matt Schlapp arranged for the defense of some Trump flunkies via the firm, and this reference to funding going to Schlapp from the J6C Report. In Klukowski’s second interview, the one discussing documents that had been liberated in part under a crime-fraud exception, one of Klukowski’s lawyers objected to the possibility that Klukowski might have to reassert privilege claims under oath. Whether these transcripts are part of why DOJ unsealed the grand jury materials or not, the two transcripts show how liberating the Eastman communications undercut much of what Klukowski had originally said about his involvement. And because he had already testified, this second interview provided useful backtracking on his earlier interview. The two transcripts may serve as useful tools in further breaching the privilege claims of these three lawyers, if not obtaining cooperation from one or several of them.

Alex Cannon’s two interviews

Alex Cannon is another example. Trump whisperers Josh Dawsey and Maggie Haberman have given him good press for his role in the stolen documents case. In February 2022, they tell us, Cannon refused to certify that Trump had turned over the the documents the President took from the White House.

Shortly after turning over 15 boxes of government material to the National Archives in January, former President Donald J. Trump directed a lawyer working for him to tell the archives that he had returned all the documents he had taken from the White House at the end of his presidency, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The lawyer, Alex Cannon, had become a point of contact for officials with the National Archives, who had tried for months to get Mr. Trump to return presidential records that he failed to turn over upon leaving office. Mr. Cannon declined to convey Mr. Trump’s message to the archives because he was not sure if it was true, the people said.

[snip]

The conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cannon took place after officials at the archives began asking Mr. Cannon, following the return of the 15 boxes, whether additional classified material was at Mar-a-Lago. It was when Mr. Cannon raised this with Mr. Trump that Mr. Trump told him to tell the archives he had given everything back, the people familiar with the discussion said.

At the time, the various investigations related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters were ramping up, with a number of requests for documents, the people familiar with the discussion said. Mr. Cannon told people that he was concerned that if Mr. Trump was found to be withholding material related to Jan. 6, he would be in a worse situation, according to people familiar with the discussions.

But Cannon’s two transcripts (April 13 and August 18, 2022) put that seeming scrupulousness in different light. Much of the first one establishes how, because of the jobs he was given as a campaign lawyer, he was in a position to understand that the claims made in fundraising emails sent after the election conflicted with the evidence showing no significant vote fraud. At the very end of that first interview, though, investigators asked Cannon why he was claiming privilege over discussions with Jared Kushner about forming a PAC when he was working with a campaign that should not legally coordinate with such a PAC (to say nothing of Cannon’s admitted inexperience on campaign finance law).

In that first interview, Cannon agreed that money raised after the election would have to be spent on recounts or debt retirement. His second interview (which took place ten days after the Mar-a-Lago search) focused more closely on how money raised in the guise of fighting vote fraud was actually spent. In it, Cannon bristled when investigators suggested campaign money could only be spent on debt retirement or recounts.

Then in Cassidy Hutchinson’s September interviews (September 14 and 15) — the two focused on attempts to obstruct her testimony — she described how Cannon first helped set her up with Trump lawyer Stephen Passantino, and then tried to get her several jobs. Hutchinson also described how Passantino claimed that Cannon (as well as Eric Herschmann, another person heroically portrayed in Maggie stories) was involved in the manipulation of stories with Maggie Haberman.

When J6C made its referrals, it made clear that DOJ was already aware of efforts to tamper with Hutchinson’s testimony. Hutchinson started cooperating with DOJ shortly after her solo J6C testimony, in July. So even before the raid on Mar-a-Lago, then, DOJ likely understood that Cannon’s role was more complex than you might understand from reading a Maggie Haberman story. Importantly, Cannon’s role in allegedly tampering with Hutchinson’s J6C testimony would span the time when (per Maggie’s reporting) he heroically refused to certify Trump’s February 2022 production and the time in May 2022 when Trump’s team tried to find ways to stave off further investigation. These strands overlap temporally.

That puts Cannon’s role as a witness in much different light, because it would give him different visibility — and criminal exposure — on several different things: Trump’s document theft, Trump’s lies about vote fraud, Trump’s efforts to tamper with witnesses, and Trump’s spending of money raised to combat vote fraud.

And that’s important background when you consider CNN’s reporting about the financial side of DOJ’s investigation, which described that “in recent months” an existing year-long investigation into the financing of the attack has shifted (like the J6C focus has) to how money raised purported in support of election integrity actually got spent.

Another top prosecutor, JP Cooney, the former head of public corruption in the DC US Attorney’s Office, is overseeing a significant financial probe that Smith will take on. The probe includes examining the possible misuse of political contributions, according to some of the sources. The DC US Attorney’s Office, before the special counsel’s arrival, had examined potential financial crimes related to the January 6 riot, including possible money laundering and the support of rioters’ hotel stays and bus trips to Washington ahead of January 6.

In recent months, however, the financial investigation has sought information about Trump’s post-election Save America PAC and other funding of people who assisted Trump, according to subpoenas viewed by CNN. The financial investigation picked up steam as DOJ investigators enlisted cooperators months after the 2021 riot, one of the sources said.

When Cannon refused to certify Trump’s production in February 2022, he had personal exposure in January 6. Refusing to certify documents because withholding some might amount to obstruction is far less heroic than the Trump whisperers have made out. But in ensuing months, as the complexity of Cannon’s role has become clear, it would provide DOJ many angles for DOJ to persuade Cannon to cooperate.

Other privilege claims

The grand jury release last month made me realize just how complex it is to investigate suspected crimes in which at least 12 lawyers were involved. But the transcripts should help DOJ pierce other privilege claims as well. For example, multiple witnesses were asked and mocked the idea that their own conversations with Jenna Ellis — who is a lawyer whose name was on many of the subpoenas DOJ has sent out but was often described as playing a spokesperson role — might be privileged. The same is true of lawyer Boris Epshteyn, described as playing a logistics, not legal role.

So in the same way that DOJ seemed to focus on emails involving Scott Perry with the Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Klukowski seizures, the J6C testimony will provide many more levers to use to chip away at attorney-client privilege claims (on top of what seems to be a slew of subpoenas that will partly serve the same purpose).

At some point in recent weeks, Jack Smith returned to the US to oversee the investigation he has been leading since November. The belated sharing of J6C transcripts will likely provide a big boost to that investigation.

Share this entry